Steve Benen, writing for the Maddow Blog, has compiled a list of 30 flagrant lies told by Mitt Romney this week alone. It’s an eye-opening collection of falsehoods so egregious that it’s mind-boggling that he has been permitted to get away with it. All Al Gore had to do was be misquoted about his participation in promoting the Internet and his name became synonymous with “stretching” the truth. But Romney seems to have no limit for deliberate deception and he is still taken seriously by the press who should be holding him accountable.

Here are just the first 10 items on Benen’s list:

1. In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Romney claimed it’s fiscally responsible to eliminate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act: “It saves $100 billion a year to get rid of it.”
   
   
   That’s the opposite of the truth. According to the CBO and other nonpartisan budget estimates, killing the law would make the deficit go up, not down, and would cost, not save, the country hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.

2. In the same interview, Romney said, “I think a lot of people forgetting is there is only one president in history that’s cut Medicare by $500 billion and that is President Obama.”
   
   
   Romney says this a lot. He’s not telling the truth.

3. Romney also said, “I see people holding up signs, ‘Don’t touch my Medicare.’ It’s like, hey, I’m not touching your Medicare.”
   
   
   Romney endorsed Paul Ryan’s House Republican Budget plan, which ends the Medicare program and replaces it with a private voucher scheme.

4. In the same interview, Romney said President Obama has “never had the experience of working in the private sector.”
   
   
   Actually, that’s not true. Obama worked at a private-sector law firm before entering public service.

5. Romney also told Hannity Obama went on “an apology tour” in his first year.
   
   
   As Romney surely knows by now, he’s lying.

6. Romney, trying to talk about foreign policy, said Syria is Iran’s “route to the sea.”
   
   
   Iran doesn’t share a border with Syria, and Iran already borders two bodies of water.

7. At a campaign event in Stratham, New Hampshire, Romney claimed, “Bill Clinton and so many other mainstream Democrats are revolting against the backward direction President Obama is taking his party and our country.”
   
   
   In reality, Bill Clinton supports the president’s re-election and recently said a Romney presidency would be “calamitous for our country and the world.”

8. At an event in Cornwall, Pennsylvania, shared an anecdote about a local optometrist who was forced to fill out a “33-page” change-of-address form — several times — at the post office.
   
   
   There is no such change-of-address form.

9. At the same event, Romney said Obama is “taking away” scholarships and charter schools for “kids in Washington, D.C.”
   
   
   This has become a line in Romney’s stump speech, but it isn’t in any way true.

10. Romney also claimed, “This president has put together almost as much public debt as all the prior presidents combined.”
    
    
    That’s a lie.

There are 20 more lies like this in the past week, and Benen has chronicled 22 weeks of further fabrications. This is not the typical behavior of a politician, who can be expected to “interpret” information in self-serving ways, or to waver from veracity from time to time. This is evidence of a clinical psychosis. Romney has been rated as untruthful 54 times by PolitiFact, and 13 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies. Is it just me, or shouldn’t this be newsworthy?